First, I got my Dish HD Absolute package installed about 1 month before they discontinued selling it. So I now get all the HD channels including locals and DVR for $40 a month. Hell yeah! Then I jumped on my wife’s iPhone plan, which is mostly company paid, and converted it to a family plan. Hello shiny new iPhone 3G, goodbye old crappy phone from 2006. Then Dish shows up at CES with a Sling-Loaded DVR. Sling-Loaded meaning that not only can you record, pause, and rewind live TV but now you can also stream that TV to pretty much any internet connected device in the world. How sweet is that? The reason I said pretty much any device is because there is not a SlingPlayer app for the iPhone… at least not yet.

Electronista cites “a source close to Apple’s approval processes,” who claims Apple is giving SlingPlayer the red light because AT&T fears it will strain bandwidth on its network.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo! Damn you AT&T. Damn you Apple for submitting to AT&T. Damn you Sling for being so cool that I would get this upset over an app.

Thankfully, there is a silver lining:

However, Wired.com thinks SlingPlayer will appear in the App Store for a few reasons. First, Sling is a very high-profile, popular service whose plans for an iPhone app have been well-documented; a flat rejection would cause an uproar. Second, Sling tells Wired.com it has a good, communicative relationship with Apple, and we trust Apple will not break that relationship. Third, Apple already announced it’s optimizing live streaming in the upcoming iPhone 3.0 OS — a Major League Baseball app using this improved streaming support is already in the works, although it remains unconfirmed whether this will only work with Wi-Fi.

Well now I don’t know what to think. Will it happen? Won’t it happen? Who knows. I just hope the gadget gods give Sling the push they need to get the SlingPlayer Mobile app approved.